Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 5. Whole No. 801, May 2008
- Автор: Блок Лоуренс, Пикард Нэнси
- Год: 2008
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 5. Whole No. 801, May 2008». Краткое содержание книги:
“Such as the heating.”
“I was only away two days. Imagine if I’d been gone all week? Or a fortnight?”
“Or a long cruise,” Joe suggested. “Four weeks, sometimes six. Two months, even. I’ve seen adverts.”
“It doesn’t bear thinking about,” Tom said. “House was like a heatwave as it was. The bill’ll be ruinous. Then there were the kitchen japes. Fridge and freezer doors swinging open, oven on full blast. And the phone, she’d left the phone off the hook. After dialing one of those premium-rate chat lines. Jesus!”
“It’s not good,” Joe agreed, shaking his head. “Not good at all.”
“And what she did with my shirt...”
He’d been steadily growing redder through this recital, and Joe was worried Tom Parker might have a seizure or something; perhaps a mild apoplectic episode requiring medical intervention. He was a youngish man, so this wasn’t desperately likely, but as Joe’s first-aid expertise stopped at dialing 999, he thought it best to steer conversation away from the shirt. “You’ll forgive my saying so, I know,” he said. “Not only because we are friends, but because you’re a fair man. But you keep saying Tessa did this. Did she perhaps leave a note? Or some other declaration of some description?”
“Of course she didn’t, Joe. We’re talking criminal damage here.”
“She seemed a nice young woman,” he mourned.
“Well,” Tom Parker said, “don’t they all? To start with.”
He’d first met Tom Parker three months previously, at a French Market in Gloucester Green, where they’d fallen into conversation over the relative merits of the olives on offer. Tom had been with Tessa — Tessa Greenlaw — and Joe, in the way of such meetings, had assumed them an established couple. He himself had been with Zoe at the time, and for all he knew, Tom and Tessa made the same assumption about them. Not that Zoe had been on the spot when the conversation started, of course — she had a way of bringing such encounters to an early close — but by the time she returned from a nearby wine stall, Joe was already ushering his new friends in the direction of a coffee bar.
“You’ll never stop collecting strays, will you?” she’d said later.
“Hardly strays. He runs a language school. She is an NHS, what are they calling them now? Managers? Hardly strays, Zoe.”
“It’s the kind of thing old people do.”
Joe would never get to be old, but neither of them knew that yet. Besides, as he said, the pair weren’t strays: Tom Parker was mid thirties, with a relaxed, confident way which expressed itself in his clothing, his smile, and the direct expression he wore when he shook Joe’s hand. “Joe,” he’d said. “Good to meet you. This is Tessa.” Tessa was a few years younger: a sweet-faced blonde woman whose small, squarish, black-framed spectacles gave the impression that she was trying to look less attractive than she was, though to Joe’s mind they made her look rather sexy. While waiting for coffee, the group swapped life details.
“I’ve never met a private detective,” Tom had said.
Joe shrugged modestly.
“Well, now you’ve met two,” Zoe told him.
“Do you solve many crimes?”
“That depends on what you mean by ‘solve,’” Joe said carefully. “And also ‘crimes.’”
“It sounds fascinating,” Tessa said. She had a rather breathy voice, to Joe’s ear.
“It sounds fascinating,” Zoe echoed sarcastically as they made their way home later.
“She was trying to show an interest, that’s all. I thought they were a nice couple.”
Though as it turned out, they were no longer a couple by the time Joe next encountered Tom.
This had been in a bar in the city centre, where Joe had been watering a police contact of his, one Bob Poland, who had no useful information on a young runaway case Joe was working on but managed to drag it out to five large scotches anyway. Joe himself had been nursing a beer, because there was no point getting competitive with a thirsty cop. He was only halfway through it when Bob had to leave — his shift was up — so was unfolding his newspaper when Tom Parker walked through the door. His language school, Joe remembered as he raised a hand in greeting, was just round the corner.
“You remember me?”
“Of course — Joe, isn’t it?”
“Silvermann.”
“From the olive stall.”
“Well—”
“The private eye, don’t worry. I remember.”
He often dropped in here for a drink once the working day was done, he told Joe. The pair settled at a table by the window.
“And Tessa, how is she?”
“Oh, I’m not seeing her anymore.”
“Tom! No! What happened?”
“Well, nothing. Christ, Joe, it’s not the death of romance or anything. We dated for a while and now we’re not. Simple as that.” Something in his expression, though, suggested it wasn’t that simple.
“But...”
“But what?”
But nothing, Joe had to admit. Nothing he wanted to say out loud. That they had seemed a nice couple, and that nice couples ought to stick together, if only to set an example to everyone else. “Should I — would you like another drink?” When all else failed, offer hospitality. “Should I go to the bar?”
“Joe, they have table service.” Tom raised a hand for the waitress. “Why do it yourself when you can pay someone else to do it? How about you, you want the other half?”
“Perhaps I will.”
Tom ordered their drinks, then went on, “Besides, she’s unstable. Was right from the start.”
“Unstable?”
“I used to get phone calls from her in the middle of the night. Checking up. That I was alone, and where I ought to be.”
Joe clucked his tongue, shook his head. “Late-night phone calls. Zoe and I, we had a spate awhile back. They get tired, they give up. You’re sure this was Tessa?”
“Sometimes she’d arrive on my doorstep unexpectedly, or be waiting when I left work. You ever been stalked, Joe?”
“Is it stalking, this? Not just...”
“Just what?”
Joe shrugged. “Perhaps she just wants to be with you.”
“Feels like stalking to me, mate.” He shook his head. “It’s a hell of a world, Joe, I’m telling you. And most of its problems caused by women.”
Well, maybe half, Joe conceded. If you ignored war and famine and stuff.
They fell to talking about other things. The next Joe heard about Tessa, Tom was in his office, outlining the damage.
He had taken a cigarette from a pocket but didn’t light it; just held it between finger and thumb as he spoke. “Those phone calls? They never stopped. Oh, she wouldn’t speak, but it was her. Middle of the night, and I’m getting woken up to be given the silent treatment. Or not woken up, if you know what I mean.”
“Sometimes you’re already awake,” Joe guessed.
“Not alone, either. You can imagine the damper that puts on proceedings.”
“She sounds unhappy.”
“And I care? She’s freaking nuts, Joe. And driving me crazy while she’s at it.”
“Have you been to the police?”
“What good would that do? Look. I know it was Tessa, you know it was Tessa. Bloody Tessa knows it was Tessa. But knowing isn’t proving. We get into an I said/she said situation, the best that’ll happen is she’ll get told to watch her step by the boys in blue. Meanwhile, I’m still paying the bills on her domestic terrorism, thanks a bunch.”
“How did she get in?”
“In?”
“To your house,” Joe explained. “She didn’t look, pardon my saying, like a housebreaker.”
“Oh, right. No, she didn’t need to be. We’d swapped keys, but she never gave it back. Claimed she did, but she didn’t.”